Roland Burris, (D – Ill?)
The Illinois Governor accused of wanting sizable favors/bribes in return for appointment to the US Senate, Bolgojevic, has just announced an appointment of Ronald Burris to that position.
The president elect and the Senate are on vacation, as is most of the political media between Christmas and New Year.
I just saw Mr. Burris on the December 30th Rachel Maddow show (iTunes) and I am always bewildered when anyone running for or in public office, especially someone with so much experience, doesn’t have a good answer for the obvious question.
Why did you accept this, obviously tainted, appointment?
Mr. Burris stammered on trying to defend the appointment. Don’t defend the appointment! Defend the acceptance of it!
The correct answer: Governor Blogo seemed hell bent to defy the mainstream wishes that he not appoint someone. He felt the need to prove his is still relevant, and it didn’t seem I could disuade him of this action. Given that, and my lifelong desire to be a servant to the citizens of this state, I thing I can be a great voice for them in the Senate. Were I to pass up this appointment, I don’t know what other person he might choose.
It continues to amaze me how candidates and spokes persons continually don’t provide what seems to me to be the obvious answer. Often Ego is the problem; practicing humility will help.
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Lights in the Heights 2008
The year’s party has come and gone. It’s been at my house for eight years, and coincides with Lights in the Heights which is put on by the Woodland Heights neighborhood, which is half a block from me.
We had an estimated 400 people at the peak, and perhaps 600 people throughout the night. Bubba Coltrane & the Train Wrecks (Bob, Ed, and Mike) played again, after taking last year off and adding a great new guitarist to the lineup (Kenny). After providing the music last year, DJ Larry returned and filled the spaces before and after the band.
For the third year in a row, no police came to complain. This is attributed to 1) the Lights in the Heights is getting considerably larger. We used to be the only large rowdy party. We still likely go the latest, but we’re not too loud after 1am; 2) most of the neighborhood is currently empty with houses under construction, the other neighbors are used to it (and many are at the party). Also, cooler weather means no one is sleeping with their windows open.
Once again we had some fabulous flaming art cars parked in the front of the house. Also a sizable early contingent of roller derby girls, and some in for the long haul. Quite a few friends made it in from Austin and at least one from Dallas. We had a crew of party supporters buy an extra keg of beer for the party. Props to the NTN Crew!
The five kegs of beer ran out about 12:15, there was a small surge about 2pm from some industry folks, at 2pm there were about a dozen people, and somewhere after 4:30 the thing finally wound down. I was up again at 10:30 beginning the cleaning, and spent 5 hours at it. Conn spent about as much, and that got it about 80% cleaned up (but with about twice as much more time that needs to be put in – that last 20% of cleaning is the most laborious.
Only two vomiting incidents (that I had to somehow deal with) and one broken window (very likely accidental from the Star Chair. Three people slept over, two of which called in advance and reserved a spot. The following items remained that didn’t begin here: a cell phone, a plaid woman’s jacket (belonging to “Emily S.”), a small trendy women’s jacket, a suitcase, a back pack (with 2 full beers), an elf hat with ears, a pink pirate hat/beannie, a pink helmet, a wrist guard, a baby bottle containing water, a gray cloth glove.
Personal party gifts from friends: some nice tequila, an insulated longhorn mug, and St. Arnold Devine Reserve #2. Thanks (you know who you are).
We also have a few minutes of walk-through of the party from Rob Zipp:
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Prop 8 – The Musical
There was a lot of play in various news sources last week about Prop 8 – The Musical. So, from the Sacramento Community College Players to you (via YouTube)…
For those of you who weren’t paying attention, California barely passed a proposition to amend their state constitution to ban gay marriage. There was a lot of money from conservative religious groups from outside the state poured into advertising to scare the voting public.
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Hard Work Under the House
After two hours of crawling under my house and prying out rotten wood, disposing of various debris, and happening across a 100+ year old bottle, in preparation to make the second bathroom serviceable for the christmas party, … I have slimmed down my expectations of how I’m going to get it working.
It was a bit wet under the house, and grubbing around under there got me quite dirty. But there’s enough to do around the house to fill the remaining 10 days if I gave up on the bathroom. But I’m not going to give up yet. It will be minimal and arty.
Afterward I immediately had to strip down and take a shower, being covered in dirt head to toe. Upon reaching down to pick up my clothes afterword I got a whiff of urine. I suspect not from the bathroom previously above, but from the semi-feral felines and possums that enjoy romping around under the house. They went straight into the washing machine.
There’s a lot of cleanup I’d like to do under the house. Remove old unused pipe. Remove fallen useless insulation. Perhaps even prevent heavy rain from draining under the house to pool.
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Bionic Blogging
Been a while since I’ve posted. Not that I haven’t had things I want to write about, I’ve just been allocating my sparse time elsewhere.
There have been articles about blogging being dead. Baah. There have been articles about Twitter’s short attention span pushing into blogging’s space. Perhaps some truth there.
As I was driving home today, the evening commute that takes twice as long as the morning one, it struck me that blogging may get an uptick in the future. I think that voice recognition may lead to more “writing” on blogs. I certainly have plenty of time in my car during the commute. And ideas often come to me while driving.
The ubiquity of audio note taking on cell phones and mp3 “players” (hopefully soon for me, the second generation iPod Touch) will help people to take down their thoughts. Voice recognition is becoming more common (Google’s iPhone app for searches). Whether it’s available on the device itself or your home computer, it will be available soon.
I can image a Google Transcribe application that takes the whole recording on your phone. Sends it instantly or later to the Google farm and delivers the text to you via email or back to the mobile/desktop application. You wouldn’t need any local ability to transcribe. (And Google could start indexing your thoughts.)
Until then, I’ll try to write more. (I really write mostly for myself.) And when the pocket transcriber gets here, I’ll try not to write too much.
